Tag: pareidolia

The Huff Post has a story on the most bizarre religious sightings from 2011, which I read on New Year’s Day. The Post story has people finding images of Jesus on everything from sandwiches to rock faces to dirty laundry and pizzas last year. No Photoshopping, honest…

Amazingly, most of the images look more to me like Ashton Kutcher than the radical Jewish rabbi of biblical description. Maybe we won’t know the truth until images of Demi Moore start appearing on toast.

One of the sighting includes the word “God” spelled out in veins on a woman’s leg (see here). She noticed it while shopping at a local mall. Some folks may find it comforting to know their supreme being has chosen a Wichita, Kansas, woman to spread his/her word – on her skin. Looking at the pictures, I wonder if the supreme being might be dyslexic, or simply really bad at handwriting, because to me at the best it looks like “Ooq” or “goo”on her leg.

I would have thought something more impressive, like “Mene, mene tekel upharsin” would have been better proof of a divine message than “Ooq.” Unless, of course, the message is meant for chimps and gorillas, not humans. And why the supreme being would write in English, rather than a biblical language, is unclear. Would Yod-He-Vav-He have been too much to write? Would a mid-western American shopper have even recognized Hebrew?

But take heart, ye desperate-for-a-miracle believers, because the bottom of the page of that story includes the sighting of Jesus in a crumpled sock in England. On seeing the visage in her drying laundry, Sarah Crane realized she had “the most holy pair of socks in Britain” and built a shrine to the sock. A shrine to a sock. In the land of Monty Python, it’s a place pilgrims will flock, I’m sure. Sorry I missed it on my recent trip to Old Blighty.

On this side of the Atlantic, right here in Ontario, you can line up to see Jesus on a fish stick. Imagine people flocking to the fish freezer at Loblaws to light candles over a box of frozen Highliner fillets…

HuffPost isn’t alone in listing bizarre religious sights from 2011. Back last March, The Shark Guys ran a story on ten strange “Virgin Mary” sightings. These include variously imagined images of Mary in such unlikely media as potatoes, bird droppings and restaurant griddles.

Buzzfeed picks up on stories from around the Net and adds more weird sightings of Jesus and Mary, that includes dried mangos, tie-dyed T-shirts, melted chocolate and that all time favourite, rock faces.

Some believers will take almost anything as an image that bolsters their faith (called pareidolia). In a separate HuffPost story, a Virginia artist has had to fend off the pious because they’ve come to worship at his 30-foot sculpture of a pregnant woman, claiming it resembles the Virgin Mary (to me it looks more like Stevie Nicks did about 20 years ago…). Apparently his statue to motherhood has become a stop on bus tours of religious pilgrims, who never seem to find it curious that their Mary is heavy with child, not the usually svelte portrayal. Or that she lacks hands and feet and her gold-covered head seems disproportionately large for her body.

Naan bread, tortillas, bathroom tiles, irons, frying pans, Marmite jars, perogis – Jesus and Mary seem to pick pretty mundane places to appear. Why a divine image would appear on a consumable item like a sandwich baffles me. But it doesn’t baffle believers, who proudly show them off. And then sell them.

Twenty-eleven wasn’t the only year with bizarre religious sightings: they happen all the time (see The Wondrous for a few from previous years). But thanks to the growing power of the Internet, more of them are shared than ever before. And more are on eBay, of course.

For the believers who feel slighted by not finding a holy image in their own morning cereal, this company offers a toaster that will burn the face of Jesus into your cooked bread every morning. Or the Virgin Mary. Or a peace sign, a cannabis leaf or a dog pawprint. Apparently the toaster is very popular. That begs the question if one is supposed to eat the toast or worship it. Is there some transubstantiation taking place? Too deep for me to ponder. (An alternative is the Jesus Pan, especially goof for making grilled cheese sandwiches…)

So far I haven’t run across any reports of Buddha images appearing on food, let alone walls or rock faces. Nor any images of Allah, Muhammed, Ganesh, Lao Tzu, Avalokiteshvara, Joseph Smith, Shiva, Manitou or any other religious figure or leader. I haven’t found Om-Mani-Padme-Hum inscribed on any veins or arteries, either. However, Mother Theresa did appear on the “Nunbun” at a coffee shop in Nashville, 1996, and in the same story, the name of Allah was found spelled out in eggplant seeds (in Urdu, not Arabic) in Mendhasalis, India, in 2003. It seems Jesus and Mary have cornered the franchise on images on fast foods, though.

However, I did find this remarkable image of Charles Darwin on toast. Now if someone was looking to build a shrine that would attract the likes of me, finding Darwin on a dirty tea-towel or unwashed sock, or even in a half-eaten grilled-cheese sandwich, that would be the ticket. According to The Onion, Darwin’s visage has graced at least one wall stain. Unfortunately that stain looks remarkably similar to one on a Chicago underpass wall that believers claimed showed the Virgin Mary, so I suspect my presence there lighting a candle to Charlie and his contribution to reason and science would be misconstrued.

I would think for the believers, finding a piece toast with an image of the late atheist, Christoper Hitchens, on it would really cinch their faith. After all, if Hitchens was still around in spirit, even on a pizza or a waffle, it would vindicate their belief in an afterlife.

Diego’s Quotes

"No humane being, past the thoughtless age of boyhood, will wantonly murder any creature which holds its life by the same tenure that he does. The hare in its extremity cries like a child. I warn you, mothers, that my sympathies do not always make the usual phil-anthropic distinctions."Henry David Thoreau, Walden, Ch. 11: Higher Laws